
Satellite orbiting Earth is guided by the spacetime curvature generated by the Earth’s mass (Photo: NASA)
Physicists have long thought that the singularities associated with gravity (like the inside of a black hole) should vanish in a quantum theory of gravity.
It now appears that this may indeed be the case. Researchers in Uruguay and Louisiana have just published a description of a quantum black hole using loop quantum gravity in which the predictions of physics-ending singularities vanish, and are replaced by bridges to another universe.
Singularities, such as the infinitely strong crushing forces at the center of a black hole, in a physical theory are bad. What they tell you is that your description of the universe fails miserably to explain what happens as you approach the singularity. Tricks can sometimes resolve what appears to be singular behavior, but essential singularities are signs of a failure of the physical description itself.
General relativity has been summed up by the late John Wheeler’s phrase: “Spacetime tells matter how to move, matter tells spacetime how to curve.” Relativity is riddled with essential singularities, because gravity is both attractive and nonlinear – curvature in the presence of mass tends to lead to more curvature, eventually leading to trouble.
The result is rather similar to a PA system on the verge of producing a feedback whistle. If you whisper into the microphone (small gravitational fields) the positive feedback isn’t enough to send the PA into oscillation, but talking at a normal volume (larger gravitational fields) produces that horrible howl. Whispering is the comparable to the familiar actions of gravity that keep the planets and stars in their courses. The howl is the process that eventually leads to a singularity as the end result of gravitational collapse.
Let’s follow this analogy a bit further. On a PA system, the volume of the feedback is limited by the power capacity of the amplifier, so it can’t reach truly destructive levels (other than to our eardrums.) However, gravity as described by general relativity doesn’t have such a limit. Since gravity is always attractive, and eventually becomes stronger than all the (known) forces that normally give volume to matter, there is nothing to keep gravitational collapse from proceeding until the curvature of the spacetime tends toward infinity – i.e. a singularity.
Remember that this is the prediction of the classical theory of gravity, general relativity. Classical physical theories contain no fundamental limitation on mass-energy density or on the size of spacetime curvature. While this may be (and probably is) incorrect, we rarely run into a problem caused by this error, so have largely ignored the problem for centuries.
Then along came gravitational collapse and black holes. First proposed by geologist John Mitchell in 1783, a black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, even light, from escaping.
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Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity describes how the fabric of space and time, or spacetime, is curved in response to mass. Our sun, for example, warps space around us such that planet ...
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- Some black holes may actually be tangles in the fabric of space-time, new research suggestson May 22, 2023 at 2:00 pm
A new paper discusses how light interacts with theoretical objects called "topological solitons" — kinks in the fabric of space-time that look just like black holes.
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- Researchers say some black holes may be kinks in the fabric of space-timeon May 18, 2023 at 7:17 pm
New research has revealed that some black holes may be kinks in the fabric of space-time, raising even more questions.
- Scientists Say They've Finally Solved Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Paradoxon May 5, 2023 at 8:03 am
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- Quantum computers could simulate a black hole in the next decadeon April 30, 2023 at 6:09 am
A quantum computer capable of simulating the exotic behaviour of a black hole and answering questions at the frontier of modern physics could be possible in the next decade, according to one of ...
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- The most mystifying black holes in the universeon May 27, 2023 at 7:00 pm
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Black holes, although emitting no light of their own, interact with their environment because of their enormous gravitational fields. They usually form an accretion disc of material orbiting faster ...
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- Build Your Own Black Holeon May 25, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Okay, perhaps the title here is a bit of an exaggeration, but this black hole lamp made by [Will Donaldson] is an interesting approach to creating a black hole simulation without destroying the earth.
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There's something odd about the black holes discovered to date. We've found hardly any black holes in the intermediate mass range, and it's not clear why.
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On May 24, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) began an 18-month campaign to detect the most distant collisions between black holes and neutron stars ever ...
- Can recreating black holes in the lab solve the puzzles of space-time?on May 25, 2023 at 3:51 am
Researchers are building models of everything from black holes to the big bang in tanks of liquid. Now some claim these surprisingly simple models are showing us where our theories of space-time are w ...
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At the heart of a glob of stars drifting through the Milky Way lurks a beast. Located some 6,000 light-years away, a globular cluster known as Messier 4 appears to be clumped around a black hole some ...
- Hubble Space Telescope reveals a rare black hole lurking in our cosmic backyard (video)on May 24, 2023 at 3:00 am
Data from the Hubble Space Telescope about the nearby M4 globular cluster suggests a rare midsize black hole may be lurking at its center.
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